This weekend’s game brings Everton to B6 for the second of two games this season between the two sides. With Everton v Villa being the top contested fixture in the English top flight, chances to watch such a spectacle appear to come thick and fast, although Villa may consider the game a potential stumbling block.
In recent weeks, Villa’s overall form has been erratic, whilst their home form has been consistent. Sadly for Villa, and their fans, the consistency of their home performances has largely been losses in recent times. In fact, should Villa lose the game against Everton, it will be the worst run of home form since 1963. Certainly not a record that anyone is hoping is equalled.
Villa come to the game off the back of a suitably effective performance against League 2 Bristol Rovers, whilst Everton make their way to B6 after a loss to a team equal on points with second place Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur.
On the face of it, both fixtures have provided outcomes that are almost expected. Better teams have beaten lesser teams. Bristol Rovers’ league form has been as woeful as Tottenham’s has been brilliant. However, prior fixtures don’t always provide any reference on who might win or lose.
Getting Things Right, Getting Things Wrong
In recent times, Internet forums, blogs and social media sites have lit up with suggestions of a protest against the current managerial regime, with widespread suggestions that banners will be unfurled against Everton, as well as an abstinence of support in the first fifteen minutes.
Whilst I understand the modus operandi of those who are willing to engage in such a protest, I find such plans to be counter productive to an already fragile team morale. I’m not suggesting that accepting any old type of football should be on the agenda of Villa supporters, but to imagine that producing bed sheets, presumably with predictable scrawls suggesting McLeish/the board/the tea lady should be sacked, will do anything positive for the club is, frankly, a bit naive.
Don’t get me wrong, I defend the right to freedom of speech, and freedom of protest, but when I recently heard parallels drawn by some of those on Twitter to the struggles in Syria, Egypt and Tunisia, I really had to laugh. I didn’t laugh because I find the causes that were fought for in Tahrir Square to be insignificant, merely that to compare them to Villa’s current worries has as much consonance as the boogeyman and Charles Manson.
After all, for all the issues that Villa may be facing with uninspiring football, erratic form, tight purse strings, and management displeasure, the people of Aston are hardly enslaved by a dictatorship, tirelessly working away under Randy Lerner, who enacts his order via Birmingham’s answer to the Gestapo.
Such a suggestion is delusional, to the point that I often wonder just what drugs these people must be taking to come up with such a conspiracy, as well as hoping said people can find tablets to control their seemingly perpetual, anger-driven, high blood pressure.
Are Villa suffering from a boring and dull season where paying for football has been poor value, yes.
Are Villa toiling under a gross conspiracy of Randy Lerner to enslave fans into an eternity of suffering, no.
To say that any of us are finding the current situation at Villa to be acceptable, would be far from the truth, but when comparisons are drawn between protests for freedom, and the supposed parallels in football, how else am I supposed to respond?
That these ideas, these comparisons are totally normal?
That I should join the repetitious sing-song of “McLeish Out” for the simple fact of caving to peer pressure and the quoted “majority”?
That such suggestions aren’t the ramblings of an angry mob, consumed by emotion, concerned more with getting what “they” want and demand, regardless of what other fans with contrary views think, regardless of the restrictions that finances often push on to the football club, and regardless of reality.
McLeish Out? Solution Or Not?
I’ve sat and discussed, mano et mano with people who want McLeish out on regular occasion, and asked them who should replace the often ill-regarded Glaswegian. Most of the time the answer is the same – “Anyone but McLeish!”
Sadly, this isn’t really an “answer” to anything. Whilst it may sate the seemingly unending bloodlust for a sacrificial lamb to “save Villa’s season”, it doesn’t offer a solution, nor does it take Villa forwards either. Anyone can utter words of frustration and/or criticism regarding an unfavourable manager, but I have yet to see someone who has been able to pick out a better alternative that a) is achievable and b) sates the criteria that the owners use to pick a successful candidate.
Whether you agree with the owner’s criteria or not, and I, for the record, don’t, sacking McLeish means Lerner et al returning to the drawing board to find another “suitable” candidate. Whilst those wanting McLeish sacrificed may get their wish if the manager continues to stumble, such a chance of dislodging the owner is infinitesimal.
After all, Randy Lerner owns the club, ergo Randy Lerner will pick any replacement should Alex end up in a point of no return.
I’d like to placate fans by suggesting that any other reality is likely, largely to stop the anger, but it isn’t. People may think chopping McLeish will solve the current problems, that it will be a catharsis for the club, allowing a fresh and optimistic outlook for fans, and that all may well be better.
However, it won’t. It may buy, should it happen, a period that a new manager gets as breathing space to get fans off his back. It won’t, however, make Villa’s situation any more palatable, merely that the club wouldn’t be managed by a ginger haired man from Glasgow.
The same problems will face Villa, the same issues, the same poor performances, except this time a man who has needed support, Stephen Ireland, who has started to find his feet under McLeish, may well be back to square one again, leaving Villa with another search for an inspirational playmaker.
A playmaker that Villa, at present at least, couldn’t afford to buy, nor hope to attract to an organisation that the detractors suggest has no positives in. Ireland isn’t the only concern of the Villa squad, nor is he a reason to keep McLeish as manager, but he is a prime example of how support, or the lack thereof, can affect people.
In this terrible vision of Aston Villa spread by some, we are both perpetually financially deficient, and woefully managed at board level. If that is what you truly believe in your heart, nobody is coming to rescue Villa in that “reality”. For the record, I think this is a blip season, a culmination of difficult finances, players sales, and the hiring of an unpopular man. However it is still a comparable wrinkle in the carpet, and something we will overcome, no matter how loud and angry some may present their views that we won’t.
I support the rights of the fans who want McLeish out, and I could even write a piece providing enough cogent evidence to recommend his sacking, but there’s a void where I can’t tell you the future under the immovable object of Randy’s will, no matter how irresistible the force fans believe that they can conjure to dislodge Alex.
Those professing at numerous times, that the “majority” “McLeish Out” demographic are “right”, does not actually make them so. It is an opinion, sure, but that’s all it is. Nobody is “right” or “wrong”, not me, and not anyone else.
The Internet may well be awash with those declaring hatred for McLeish, but the Internet is also awash with people who generally have strong and angry views, whilst many with less vociferous opinions choose to simply spectate, knowing that things aren’t that bad, or that shouting won’t solve anything anyway.
The very fact that this site receives around 9,000 individual readers per month, but only regularly has comments from a comparative select few, goes to show that many will remain silent, which is as much their right as it is for others to sound their own views. No right or wrong in that.
Positive or negative, expressed or not expressed, I uphold the right to everyone’s right to opinion, whether I agree with it or not. I do my best to attract more people to our site, regardless of their views, because I want this site to be a mouthpiece for the fans, by the fans. If you want to express your thoughts, your view, this is the place to do it.
Getting back to the current disagreements though, what I have found most challenging are those who perpetuate the belief that Villa are to be taken over via QIA, that our troubles will be extinguished by Qatari paymasters, looking to turn Aston Villa into the latest entrant into the realms of the nouveau riche.
What hasn’t helped their cause is these people are the same ones who, day after day, stated David Moyes would be manager of Villa after Houllier, and that you should bet your life savings on it. As though Moyes really was the Messiah, regardless of his non-appearance, and not, in fact, a manager who bought Darron Gibson yesterday.
As if such an incorrect prediction wasn’t sufficient to have people hiding away under fear of being found and tortured which, if you were to believe the prior parallels of Shard End and Syria, of Tamworth and Tunisia, of Erdington and Egypt, was highly likely, it seems that, for want of a better way of putting it, nonsense begats nonsense.
Yes, just as Adam and Eve supposedly begat the whole human race in a religious text, so those wanting to take advantage, increasingly playing on the desperation of those wanting to find a positive in a bleak campaign, create rumours that are sensationalist, ridiculous, and irresponsible.
However, as Alex McLeish said in his recent letter to season ticket holders, since when have the facts got in the way of a good story? It’s never stopped many “writers”, particularly those who seek traffic over truth, popularity over morality. Thankfully we aren’t in that category.
Facts, Not Fiction
Which leads me on to “the facts”. The facts are that Villa’s home form has been recently woeful, but then the facts also show Villa coming in off the back of a win, and Everton coming in off the back of a loss. So you can spin the facts either way, but only the final score will tell you how probability ultimately crystallised.
The reality is that statistics and their supporting arguments rarely provide an honest view, merely one that backs up the pre-determined agenda of the author. To quote a friend of mine “Statisticians analysing a room of three men and three women came to the conclusion that people, on average, have one testicle each.” The fact of the matter is that such an analysis is wrong, in every sense of the word, for every part of that demographic. Statistics aren’t always right after all, or rather statisticians aren’t.
So, for this encounter, I’m not going to sit and ponder predicted scorelines, nor am I to assume that home form will be the reason that Villa will capitulate to Everton, or that Villa will win comfortably.
I will, however, state that your support, as fans, is needed. Raising a cheer when Villa do something good is important, especially now. Don’t sit there and sing regardless like blind supporting sheep, but support the lads when they do something good. If they get something wrong, bite your tongue this time, and give them a chance, even if it is only for one game. Don’t cheer at rubbish football, but don’t boo either.
If we don’t, we may find that we are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, with a squad that will be sapped of confidence, and an owner devoid of suitable alternatives to Alex McLeish.
Then, my friends, we might really be in a mess. But hey, who cares, right? At least we could then plan on removing Lerner and Faulkner?
Or rather, we couldn’t. So, in the meantime, take a break, cut the players one too, and give Villa your support. If you do, we may win. If your “support” is the unfurling of banners suggesting regime change, fans won’t look like freedom fighters drawn as comparable to those in Arab countries, they will look increasingly like a mob baying for blood.
But then, someone’s got to pay in the end for all our “suffering”, right?
The Author
